


Sporking

by mshakarios



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Bonding, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Past Abuse, crack with feeling, my ryders' backstories are a lot more fucked up than canon, this is kinda silly but let me live
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 18:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18555781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mshakarios/pseuds/mshakarios
Summary: An unexpected side effect of swapping stories with your boyfriend's sister is the occasional inspiration for homemade gifts.(Jaal/M!Ryder, quick silly fluff with mentions of past angst. My twins had a rough childhood.)





	Sporking

**Author's Note:**

> I don't have an excuse for this. I guess I just can't stop projecting all my childhood trauma onto my Ryders. Most of the stories Liv tells about her brother are lifted directly from my own childhood. Except I don't have a twin sister to pass these stories along to my lovely gentle alien boyfriend, so I just have to go on the internet and drag myself. 
> 
> I never intended to post this, but it's been a while since I posted any fic and I, y'know, crave that validation. So have at it.

“....and then he went through this phase where the only colors he wore were red and black, because he was trying to look like this villain from one of our favorite comics. He dyed his hair and everything; God, he looked so emo, it was hysterical.”

“So….emo?”

“Oh, it’s….yeah, it’s an old human thing. Don’t worry about it, it’d take too long to explain.” Liv snorts and waves a hand nonchalantly, taking another sip of her tea. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I got up to some embarrassing stuff too when we were little. I went through this period where I was really into snakes, but like, I’d never actually seen a snake in-person before and I actually thought they were kind of fucking terrifying.”

“Hank showed me pictures of these ‘snakes’ once, while telling me about Earth. To me, they simply seem misunderstood.” 

“Yeah, well, they’re also terrifying. Anyway, I was just trying to look cool. Y’know, so people would go ‘Oh, that’s Liv Ryder, she’s the cool girl who loves snakes!’ and shit like that. I dunno, it was dumb. Hank and I were dumb kids. So after months of drawing snakes on all my schoolwork and making hissing sounds at people who pissed me off, our parents just straight-up banned all talk about snakes. I got hit a few times when I didn’t listen.”

Jaal looks at her sympathetically, saddened by the sudden turn in the conversation. He has been coming to see her regularly, making sure to visit at least once every time they dock at the Nexus. Liv is flattered; she had not been expecting her twin’s boyfriend to treat her like family so quickly. But here he is, showing up in the medbay today like he always does to sit by her cot and engage her in warm, friendly conversation. 

Liv had been unsure of how to treat him at first. She knew her brother, and she knew the type of men he preferred back in the Milky Way. Scoundrels, low-lifes, any man who would inevitably wrong him. Not that Liv was one to talk; her taste in women was strikingly similar. She figured that this, like a lot of their other strange and damaging quirks, probably had something to do with their childhood abuse. The two of them at times seemed physically incapable of seeking out partners who wouldn’t give them that rush of fear and anger and helplessness they had come to crave and expect. It had been one of the biggest contributing factors to their unstable life in the Milky Way. So when Hank had come to her shortly after she woke up, telling her that there was a new man in his life, Liv had expected the worst. 

And Jaal, so far, had defied all of her expectations. 

Liv had found herself shocked that her brother was dating a man so gentle, so kind and intelligent and well-spoken. She had watched the unfamiliar alien closely the first few times he visited her, searching in vain for any similarities to Hank’s previous scumbag paramours. After many collective hours of sitting with him, hearing the earnest care and curiosity in his voice as he asked questions about the twins’ life and the way his whole body seemed to recoil in horror when she answered his questions honestly, after seeing the way his eyes lit up like tiny galaxies every time one of them would mention Hank, Liv could come to no conclusion other than the most obvious yet most improbable one. Her brother had finally taken up with a genuinely good man. 

By now, she is comfortable with him, greeting him fondly whenever his large silhouette appears in the doors of the medbay. They sit and talk for hours, swapping stories and settling into a comfortable friendship. Jaal loves to hear her talk about Hank; he asks questions about the parts of the twins’ upbringing that weren’t terrible, and Liv is happy to answer him. She tries to cut and paste around the abuse, figuring that he doesn’t want to hear about that. Sometimes, though, she will mention something that seemed normal at the time, and the look of sadness and concern in Jaal’s eyes will make her suddenly realize how little she and Hank both know about “normal” family interactions. She looks at him now, saddened by the end of her story about snakes, and has a sudden urge to change the subject. 

“Uh...did I ever tell you about how messy our room was when we were little?”

“I...don’t believe you have.”

“Oh, man. We were a couple of little hoarders. We barely knew the _concept_ of throwing stuff away; we would just keep everything. We each had these plastic bins under our beds, and we’d keep a bunch of junk in them. At least, all the important junk. Everything else just went wherever we could fit it. Usually the floor.”

Jaal nods.

“When I was small, I often kept pieces of machinery in my room. Things I wanted to take apart and learn from. I still have much of it; I showed it to Hank when he visited my family.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure all of your stuff was actually really cool and important. Ours was just dumb shit we found.” Liv grins. “Hank had a big rock collection. He liked to call them ‘gems,’ but they were really just like, pieces of gravel he found on the sidewalk and stuff like that. He cared about them, though, so I guess that made them important.” Jaal smiles as he considers her words. Liv’s face suddenly brightens. “Oh, and the spork!” 

“The...spork?”

“Yeah, uh, a spork is like...a type of human eating utensil. It’s a combination of a spoon and a fork...I assume y’all have something sort of like each of those. It kinda looks like a little spoon with a few spikes on the...the bowl end, I guess. Fuck, I dunno how to explain it. Point is, Hank had one and he was crazy about it. I think we got it at a restaurant, and he didn’t use it and took it home instead. He liked the color; it was plastic, but it had this weird metallic silver color that he thought was cool. I dunno why; we were kids. Kids think weird things are priceless treasures, y’know? I thought the same thing about this little toy knife I had around that time. It wasn’t a real knife, obviously, just a dull little hunk of plastic. But it was real to me. And I guess that spork was a royal scepter or something to him.”

“You sound like you were very imaginative children.”

“Yeah. Wish our parents saw it that way. When Mom made Hank throw away that spork, he cried about it. She told him he was being stupid. I guess he maybe was, but she didn’t have to tell him like that.”

That same look of concern flashes over Jaal’s face, and Liv regrets her words.

“What happened?”

“You sure you wanna know?”

“It might help you to talk about it.” 

“Well...she told him that it was stupid, it was just a piece of garbage, and that he was dumb for wanting to keep it. That made him cry more. Eventually I think she got tired of it and yelled at him until he stopped. That’s usually how stuff like that ended in our house. She got her way after that; he threw the spork out.”

Jaal hangs his head for a moment, his face betraying obvious distress. 

“I’m...very sorry.” 

“Meh. It was a long time ago. I don’t know if Hank even still remembers it.”

The conversation moves on, and the spork is not mentioned again.

\------------

“Harry?” Jaal asks as two thin arms wrap around his chest from behind, pulling his attention from the project he has just finished. 

“Hey there, you!” A bright voice murmurs against his back. “Just thought I’d come and see you. You busy?”

“Not anymore. I’ve just finished working on something.”

“Ooh!” Hank detaches himself from his boyfriend, stepping around his large form to stand beside him at the workbench. “New project? I don’t recognize it.”

“I started working on it several days ago. I...made it for you.” 

Hank looks curiously at the small, thin piece of plastic in his boyfriend’s hands.

“For me? Oh! It’s…?” He mumbles nervously, looking up to search for some hint in Jaal’s expression. The face he finds looking back at him is surprisingly sheepish.

“Your sister told me a story from your childhood. About a...spork? And your mother taking it from you? And I thought...I know that it might seem ridiculous, but I only wanted to…” 

“Oh!” Hank’s face lights up with excited surprise as he realizes what the object is. “You made me a spork. Like the one my mom made me throw away when Liv and I were seven.”

“I researched it, and the shape seemed fairly simple. I used plastic, and she mentioned that it was a color like this, and...I realize that it...probably will not be very useful. The...point of this is not the object itself, I suppose, and I’m not sure why I made it--”

“I love it!” Hank takes the tiny utensil, weighing it in his hand with a bright grin on his face. “I love it so much. It’s perfect.”

“So you don’t think it was strange of me to…?”

“Oh, it’s strange, sure. But it’s exactly the kind of strange I like.” He pulls Jaal down into a kiss. “And I like you. Very, very much.”


End file.
